(Roaring like a lion).
I
couldn't figure out how to start.
We have the same haircut, now. Nice!. Not bad. Hello. Welcome
to this little section of the International Thespian Festival that they've given
to me. My name is Russ.
I'm the creative director of the Circus Freaks in Dallas, Texas, uh,
which ends as much as I'm going to talk about my resume.
If you want to hear about how awesome this guy is,
go look for him on the internet. But in the meantime,
I like you am trapped in my house,
having a very unusual year,
but we get to be together as hard as it is.
So I'm going to try to pretend that you are here right there, looking at me,
I'm looking at you and it's gonna go really well. I hope. This
workshop is called the joy of failure, and I hope you come with me on the ride.
What I'm going to ask is that you
do what you can to make a safe space for yourself.
You see...I waited till about three in the morning to film this because I needed
to work without distractions. And just a lot of distractions here.
I don't know what you need to do.
Maybe not stay up til three in the morning, cause that's just a bad idea,
but find a way to turn off all the other devices, all the other distractions.
If you walked into the classroom with me with your phone in your hand...I'd hit
you with a chair. Yeah, I would. More importantly,
my assistant would would tell you to take off your name tag and be a human being
in the room with us...because she's nicer than I am. But you came to talk to me,
what fools you are.
But the main thing we have to do is we have to create a safe space for
ourselves. If you can't do that for some reason, let me be honest,
stop the video and go do what you need to do to make a safe
space for yourself. And I don't want to say that casually. You
deserve to feel safe. And I want everyone to.
When you come into my workshop, all kidding aside,
I will bend over backwards to make it a space where you can do real work.
And by that, I mean, most of what we do is really emotional and scary. I mean,
it's one thing that we juggle knives,
or we walk on stilts or we do acrobatics... That's only part of the job.
The real job is using this (the heart) and to unpack all the armor that
goes around that and to bring it into the room is a terrifying
experience.
I don't want you to feel any terror. I just don't.
So give yourself a safe space because that's what I would do for you and take a
deep breath with me.
(Breathes deeply) And now that we're both here,
let's try to talk about this thing...I'm here to talk to you today called the
joy of failure.
The joy of the failure is an interesting workshop.
The history of it's kind of interesting.
I was asked to teach in a place that had very low ceilings and I have a workshop
that we will do when we can next be together with high ceilings and we throw a
ball and we scream and we yell and we cheer. And it's great fun,
but they stuck me in a room with a very, very low ceilings. And because of that,
I had to come up with something very quick. I did.
I came up with this idea of talking about failure, because
it's a thing that we're all very uncomfortable with.
And it seems to be there's two ways to deal with it.
There's there's option one become very good at your job.
I don't know about your life experience. I'm sure
you have better hair and you're more talented,
and you are a thousand things I'm not.
So while you might be able to go through your life not making mistakes,
I've made a hell of a lot of mistakes. And so I'm just,
I'm just not capable of going down that route.
The other route was the route I went down, which is the route of the clown.
The clown embraces the failure,
tries to find some pleasure and how silly it feels.
So that's a little bit of what I'm here to talk about.
It's a weird job. I'll tell you that.
I've
heard a lot of advice on what to do with this because...what we're really
talking about is this, this thing I'm about to name. And once I name it,
it's going to creep into the room and everybody's going to get tight.
When we're in the room together,
you can actually feel the butts tighten up in the chairs. It's a really awful.
So we had to take a lot of breaths after I say,
"we're talking about fear," and everybody goes, "Oh!" (nervously), Or they go,
"No, I don't ever get afraid," and they're lying in a different way.
So we have to take a breath and let all of that go away.
And what we're talking about is fear. Well,
I've heard a lot of advice on how to deal with it in theater.
Boy...I give you three good ones that are terrible.
And you promise me if you walk away with nothing else,
here's three things not to do.
Number one, reframe your
anxiety as excitement. I actually heard that one from a circus school.
That was what to do with your nerves is to reframe it as excitement. Decide,
it's excitement. Someone just suggested that you lie to yourself,
and in doing so, you'll lie to everyone else and they'll hate you.
So don't do that. Don't lie. Be what you are,
who you are, and how you feel. If that means you are afraid,
put a pin in it and we'll get there in a second. But don't,
don't try and make it into something it isn't. It is fear. It is there,
and that's fine. We all feel stuff. Item two.
I always hear this one, love this one.
I preface this one with saying,
I don't do this because I teach high school kids sometimes. Envision
the audience in their underwear. I also perform for children.
This is completely off the table for me.
But what a lot of it is about is putting the blame onto someone else.
Making your audience feel lesser. They're in their underwear. I've got pants!
Unless you're in England, in which case you have trousers and they have pants.
But the point is
you're doing something to put it on them. You're shifting the blame.
You're dodging responsibility. You're using your aggression on others.
You're lashing out well,
that's worthless and there's no place for it in the work. So don't do it.
I'll let you in on a little secret.
For a long time while learning how to do my job, that was my go to,
and even just admitting it sucks.
But it's what I did. And so I would get really angry, and really messed up.
I've done about three takes of this that you haven't seen,
where I got really angry and I got really messed up. And then I got past it.
And I just took a deep breath. And I did the thing. Another
piece of advice I hear very, very often is,
"Go into your mind and imagine a safe place
and then transport yourself there.".
The problem is then you're not here. Or wherever you are.
Or more importantly on stage. You're denying your emotions.
You're transporting yourself somewhere else. It's not true.
And it doesn't work because then you're not dealing with what's going on.
I mean, let's pretend.
(Gestures with toy lion) if this guy was about to eat, you. Don't worry,
he's vegetarian, but imagine a good one. (to the lion) You're fine. But
imagine a good one that goes, "Ah!"
(gestures as if lion is about to eat the viewer)
And the first thing you do is you go,
"I'm actually really excited about this!" That's not gonna work. To
blame the lion. Well,
that's a philosophical issue that I don't even want to unpack right now.
And to imagine yourself somewhere else has to become lion chow.
So that doesn't do you any good. So the question is what to do.
And the answer near as I have found it lies in a quote.
I heard once I heard this wonderful quote early in my clown career,
and I've heard it repeated by many people and I've heard it accredited to many
people.
So feel free to say I said it,
because I'm sure it was stolen from someone smarter than me.
The
clown is both the orangutan and the poet.
Now I am a bit of a gorilla or an orangutan.
So that makes sense. And I'm trying to be a little poetic about this,
but bear with me. The poet is going to talk it to death,
which is what I'm doing perfectly well. So let's look at the orangutan.
How does the orangutan handle fear? Well to understand that, in your context,
would be to go back to the beginning. As a sidebar,
I'm about to talk a little bit about evolving from something like a monkey.
If this, for some reason is a problem for you...
(Excruciatingly long pause for comedic effect.).
Good. (sarcastically).
That's what I've got. More importantly, the story is the part that matters.
So roll with that. Imagine...the
beginning of time. Primordial ooze.
Something crawls out of the muck. And over time, it crawls a bit more,
and a bit more,
and finally learns to crawl on two legs and it stands up and it is
well, a little monkey person!
A primitive being that will someday become a people.
But it is not a people yet. In fact, it's very simple.
It really only knows three things. It knows it's cold.
It knows it's hungry. And it
knows it doesn't want to be eaten by a lion.
Fight or flight. Maybe I could fight the lion?
I'm probably going to be lion chow. Maybe I could run away from the lion.
Okay...Maybe you'll starve to death or freeze to death.
And then the lion has a cold snack. Not perfect,
but that's where we started. Don't worry. There's hope. You see one day,
these little monkey people were wandering around and one of them found another
one.
Now I'm guessing the first time this happened, human
nature being what it is,
more snacks for the lion. But let's not focus on that.
Let's focus instead on the time when this one said, "Ugh!" This one said,
"Ugh!" Which is really shorthand for, "Hi, how are you? I'm fine.
I'm really glad to see another person because this entire planet has been really
boring up until now, and I want to invent television and watch it."
And so they did, sort of. They said, "Come with me into the cave,
where the lion is not.
And we'll sit around the fire together where the lion doesn't want to be.
We'll rub our hands together in front of the fire and be warm.".
And then something really interesting happened.
One of them said to the other in their own little grunting, "I'll
tell you what,
I'm going to look over your shoulder while I eat this. You eat that,
and look over my shoulder.
And that way we'll both see a lion coming.
We'll both be safe." You'll look over my shoulder. I'll look over your shoulder.
Everyone's happy. A whole group of us eventually get together and we do that.
We call it a tribe or a society. Eventually it evolves,
and we write down some rules about it, and we call it culture. We keep going,
and we call it the world. Now,
can just imagine what it must feel like?
Can you imagine what it must feel like after a lifetime of all you know is to
run away from (the lions, and) don't freeze to death,
and you're starving. To be told. Come have a seat, have a snack. Don't worry.
We got your back. How good that's got to feel. How
amazing it must be to finally be safe for a moment.
Now, if you've got that in your mind,
let me ask you another question.
What would you do to avoid somebody saying,
"I don't like to look at your face, get out, get out, go away!"?
You'd do anything. You would do anything to avoid that feeling.
What was once a survival instinct just evolved
into a different kind of survival instinct we call shame.
The crux of this talk boils down to this simple
idea. For some reason,
we focus on the smart side of you as a
theater maker. We say, think your way out of fear.
And the problem is fear, as something that is, primordially,
a response that is baked into our DNA,
that is something we've evolved with,
is a little lizard that lives in the back of our brain that's job is to keep us
from being eaten by lions, or hit by cars, or kicked out of tribes.
We try to pretend that's not there.
Why would we do that? The reality is
the thinking part of us has nothing to do with the fear part of us.
The fear part of us, it's
a little monkey person and it's scared as hell.
I told you earlier,
I had to make a safe space for people when we work.
And the reason why is if I was to take you and gently move you to a place of
discomfort, you would unzip. If you didn't feel safe.
More importantly, you'd never allow yourself to actually become uncomfortable.
You'd go through the motions of discomfort. You're probably a terrific actor.
So you'd probably convince everyone but me,
because I'm kind of an evolved monkey. And as an orangutan, I carry a card,
which says, "I know when people are scared, do something to help," I
have some good news for you.
Most of the monkeys that did not evolve
with that tribal instinct have died off.
And if you're making theater with other people, I guarantee you,
you came from a long line of creatures that were huddled together in the cold
who want to make a safe space,
to have a snack and watch each other's back and make beautiful things together.
It's as simple as that. Now,
that's the good news.
The bad news is fear still sucks.
And you will fix your problem. If you drop something on the floor,
you'll be cleaning it up before you manage to notice you made the mistake.
If you do something "inappropriate" to a tribe you'll go through the
motions of apologizing and re-statusing
yourself within that tribe before you even are aware you're doing it.
Because the alternative is a fear of death.
It's a fear of tribal shame, which if you go to that brain,
that little primitive brain, means death.
And the truth is, we're all terrified.
I don't know if that fixes it,
but I somehow feel that the separation of the intellect and that
little monkey brain...taking all the talking words and good pieces of advice out
of it and letting the monkey have its moment is the answer to this
problem. What I mean by that is when you're afraid, go ahead and feel afraid,
and finish with it. That's the thing.
That's the hard part. You have to finish with it.
You get to where you're done feeling it before you go on
to the next thing. Because if you don't,
you're going to be trying to take anxiety and combining it with joy and pretend
you're happy on stage.
And I'm sure you've seen enough bad theater to know what that looks like.
Instead finish with anxiety, let it have its moment.
Slow down enough to let it pass.
Then you can move to the next thing.
And if you get to the next thing and you still feel the anxiety,
the truth was...it's because you're not dealing with the anxiety yet.
And if somebody tells you, "Hurry up! Get well," Throw a chair at them.
They're stupid. You have to feel what you feel when you feel it.
Once you do that,
you can calm down enough to see what's on the other side of it. And yeah,
the first time you feel on the spot. We sweat,
we get tight, we get pancicked, and then it gets a little better.
As we become
exposed to this idea of being in that terror, tribal shame,
fever place, and living through it. It's exposure therapy. We go,
"Oh, the last time I stood on stage in front of people, I didn't die.
Maybe that will happen again." That's the hope.
When you think about the campfire,
all of those little primitive creatures sitting together like this,
staying warm, feeling connected, realize something else.
At the beginning of human history,
for some reason,
somebody walked up in front of the other monkey people and said, "Hey,
I've got an idea.
Let's all sit on this side of the room in the dark.
Let's look at that side of the room
and shine a light on it from the fire and pretend that anybody doing anything
there is the most important thing on Earth."
And someone got up there and told a story, or a joke,
or whatever might've happened.
The idea that we have been doing that and calling it theater ever since is
magical to me. The idea that
people are brave enough to do that. They're brave enough to
finish with their fear. Not, not have it.
This idea that they don't have their fear is insane. They finish with it,
they give it its time. Then they move to the next thing. Which is standing
in front of their tribe and saying, "Hello. I'm so happy you're here with me.
Let me tell you a story.".
Let me tell you one more.
Kind of my monkey moment. Very
early in my career of standing on the bright side of the room,
I was backstage at the very first Circus Freaks performance.
I will save you pain by not detailing the performance.
It was terrible. It was early in my career. I've gotten better since,
but I was backstage having a full tilt meltdown.
I was more scared than I've ever been. And Realize, I'm a full grown adult.
I've had another career prior to this. And here I was backstage,
about to juggle in front of some people and I was going to die.
I thought I was going to die. And there was this guy in our troupe.
He was called Big Bill and Edwoldsen.
Big bill Ewoldsen was the King of the orangutans.
He was six and a half feet tall.
He had a beard as big as my torso.
And he was the nicest man I had ever met. Big bill,
put his gigantic paw on my shoulder. And he looked down at me and he said,
"You know,
everyone out there," as he gestured through the wall and into the theater.
He said, "Everyone else out there is looking forward to seeing you.
They just want to see their friend take the stage."
He said, "Just go out there and have a good time.".
That
was my moment around the fire. For a split second,
I felt connected to Big Bill, to the show,
and to the audience. Maybe even to the world. And, it was a lot.
No one shows up to the theater and sits down at a chair,
paying their 10 bucks and goes, boy, I hope this sucks! Nobody does that.
They say, I want to see my friend. And if they don't know you, they say,
I want to see a story because my ancestors used to sit in the dark and stare at
the bright spot in the floor and see magic. And I want to see some magic too.
That's the business we're in. It's the magic business.
Step one is this simple magic spell: Feel uncomfortable,
finish feeling uncomfortable, and then feel anything you want.
I don't know what you're going to feel. I hope it's joy. Might be more anxiety.
What a bummer. My guess is it will at least be interesting.
And if you've gotten this far,
that's probably enough to keep it going until it gets good.
I wish you the best of luck.
And I have a piece of advice for you. You see, at this point in the discussion,
I would have us all get up and we would do some exercises together.
But my apartment is very, very small.
So I want you to go take a few minutes, go outside,
find somewhere, quiet.
Not near people. Get somewhere where you can hear yourself think.
And I want you to put your hands out in front of you.
I want you to imagine you can feel the fire
and keep imagining it until you feel your fingers begin to tickle.
A little tingle appears in them.
Once you've got that, put them to your side.
I want you to lean forward, just stand up and lean forward,
until you trip. Until you have to catch yourself.
You're going to catch yourself because
you're a human being and you have a lot of systems for not breaking your own
neck. If you do fall and bust your head open,
this was a suggestion and I'm very sorry. Also,
you should probably have someone take a look at whatever you did to your head.
But let's assume you survived.
There was a moment right before you stuck your foot out and caught yourself
right before you tripped yourself. You caught yourself.
There's something more than just the, I stuck my foot out really fast. There
a really uncomfortable feeling.
You probably felt stupid.
Good. What
I'm talking about is getting past that feeling. Me?
I chose to embrace it. I feel stupid all the time.
For some that's the right answer.
But even if you want to get as far away from that feeling as possible,
you have to accept one thing. It's there.
It's real.
And it's just a part of your little monkey person brain trying to keep you
from being eaten by this guy. Be
safe, make good things.
And when we get back to a theater together and we will soon,
and I'm so excited about that.
When we get into a room together,
remember people have been doing this for a very long time.
All the way since they were trying to avoid being eaten by lions as little
monkey people.
And all of them felt afraid when they started.
Don't pretend you're not. It means you're human.
Thank you so much for your time and your attention.
If you have any other questions,
you can look me up at https://circusfreaks.org.
I will flash our amazing logo and website at the end of this video.
Have a wonderful festival, and I'll look forward to seeing you soon.